A Tiger in the Street. 1936

Daniil Kharms (pseudonym of Daniil Ivánovich Yuvachev, 1905-1942)
A Tiger in the Street. 1936
Two autograph manuscripts, the poems 'Tigr na ulitse' ('Tiger in the street') and 'Ne letchik on', the first signed, ('Daniil Kharms'), n.p., n.d.

In Russian. Ten lines and eight lines, on two leaves, 206 x 140mm and 73 x 52mm, the second pinned to the first, each annotated 'urgent' for submission to the children's magazine Chizh.

Tigr na ulitse

Ya dolgo dumal, otkuda
Na ulitse vsylsia tigr
Dumal – dumal,
Dumal – dumal,
Dumal – dumal,
Dumal – dumal
V eto vremia veter dunul,
I ya zabil, o chen ya dumal.

Tak n e znayu, otkuda
Na ulitse vsalsya tigr.

One of Kharms's best-known poems for children. 'I wondered for a long time, where / the tiger came from in the street, / I thought, I thought, / I thought, I thought, / I thought, I thought, / I thought, I thought, / At this point the wind blew, / I forgot what I was thinking about. // So I don't know where / the tiger came from in the street'. The second poem is a brief, remarkably subversive, anti-militarist squib: 'He is not a pilot / nor is he a machine-gunner / and has never spent a day in battle / ... why has he received a five-pointed medal?'.

Kharms was a frequent contributor to Chizh, the most successful children's magazine of its period, published in Leningrad from 1930 to 1941. The second poem, although noted for inclusion in Chizh, is apparently unpublished – perhaps unsurprisingly in view of its content.

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